May 01, 2008

A Great Sports Story

There are occasional reminders that the sports section is not a daily wasteland of steroid users and whining overpaid athletes. This women's softball story from the Great Northwest is on its way to iconic status.

Something remarkable
happened in a college softball game last Saturday in Ellensburg, Wash.
At least, I am conditioned to think it was remarkable, since it
involved an act of sportsmanship, with two players helping an injured
opponent complete the home run she had just slugged.

Why this generous act should seem so unusual probably stems from
the normal range of bulked-up baseball players, police-blotter football
players, diving soccer and hockey players and other high-profile
professionals.

The moment of grace came after Sara Tucholsky, a diminutive senior
for Western Oregon, hit what looked like a three-run homer against
Central Washington. Never in her 21 years had Tucholsky propelled a
ball over a fence, so she did not have her home run trot in order,
gazing in awe, missing first base. When she turned back to touch the
bag, her right knee buckled, and she went down, crying and crawling
back to first base.

Pam Knox, the Western Oregon coach, made sure no teammates touched
Tucholsky, which would have automatically made her unable to advance.
The umpires ruled that if Tucholsky could not make it around the bases,
two runs would score but she would be credited with only a single.
(“She’ll kill me if I take it away from her,” Knox thought.)

Then Mallory Holtman, the powerful first baseman for Central
Washington, said words that brought a chill to everybody who heard them:

“Excuse me, would it be O.K. if we carried her around and she touched each bag?”

The umpires huddled and said it would be legal, so Holtman and the
Central Washington shortstop, Liz Wallace, lifted Tucholsky, hands
crossed under her, and carried her to second base, and gently lowered
her so she could touch the base. Then Holtman and Wallace started to
giggle, and so did Tucholsky, through her tears, and the three of them
continued this odd procession to third base and home to a standing
ovation.

OK, this does represent a violation of the "No crying in baseball" rule, but we will allow it this once.

ESPN has picked it up, and this background from the AP is interesting - apparently the losing team lost a shot at the playoffs (although one might argue that the extra run did not make a difference:

ucholsky’s injury is a possible torn ligament that will sideline her
for the rest of the season. Her home run sent Western Oregon to a 4-2
victory, ending Central Washington’s chances of winning the conference
and advancing to the playoffs.

“In the end, it is not about winning and losing so much,” Holtman
said. “It was about this girl. She hit it over the fence and was in
pain, and she deserved a home run.”

I think that is terrifically cool. However, I will have a different opinion if I ever see Jeter and A Rod helping Big Papi around the bases, thereby knocking themselves out of the playoffs.

Both schools compete as Division II softball programs in the Great
Northwest Athletic Conference. Neither has ever reached the NCAA
tournament at the Division II level. But when they arrived for
Saturday's conference doubleheader at Central Washington's 300-seat
stadium in Ellensburg, a small town 100 miles and a mountain range
removed from Seattle, the hosts resided one game behind the visitors at
the top of the conference standings. As was the case at dozens of other
diamonds across the map, two largely anonymous groups prepared to play
the most meaningful games of their seasons.

It was a typical Saturday of softball in April, right down to a
few overzealous fans heckling an easy target, the diminutive Tucholsky,
when she came to the plate in the top of the second inning of the
second game with two runners on base and the game still scoreless after
Western Oregon's 8-1 win in the first game of the afternoon.

And more on Holtman:

"And right then," Knox said, "I heard, 'Excuse me, would it be OK if we carried her around and she touched each bag?'"

The voice belonged to Holtman, a four-year starter who owns just about
every major offensive record there is to claim in Central Washington's
record book. She also is staring down a pair of knee surgeries as soon
as the season ends. Her knees ache after every game, but having already
used a redshirt season earlier in her career, and ready to move on to
graduate school and coaching at Central, she put the operations on hold
so as to avoid missing any of her final season. Now, with her own
opportunity for a first postseason appearance very much hinging on the
outcome of the game -- her final game at home -- she stepped up to help
a player she knew only as an opponent for four years.

"Honestly, it's one of those things that I hope anyone would do it for
me," Holtman said. "She hit the ball over her fence. She's a senior;
it's her last year. … I don't know, it's just one of those things I
guess that maybe because compared to everyone on the field at the time,
I had been playing longer and knew we could touch her, it was my idea
first. But I think anyone who knew that we could touch her would have
offered to do it, just because it's the right thing to do. She was
obviously in agony."

Comments

Unfortunately, part of the story is that the umpire blew the call. The rules of baseball and softball both address this issues, amazingly enough. If a player is injured in the middle of a dead ball situation, a substitute is allowed to come in and advance any bases recorded. The ump was completely wrong to say that a pinch runner would stop at first.

Apparently these women understood the spirit of the rules, even if the officials did not.

Girls are great, aren't they?

While I can't say guys would never do such a thing, as a father of five grown daughters all of whom actively participated in sports, I am confident that it would be much more likely that girls would do something like this and feel that it was just part of the game.

This type of sportswomanship was totally foreign to me until fatherhood opened my eyes to the profound differences between the sexes in competitive sports.

Male coaches in female sports must adjust to more than physical differences between genders or they will be totally unsuccessful.

"The umpires ruled that if Tucholsky could not make it around the bases, two runs would score but she would be credited with only a single... Then Mallory Holtman, the powerful first baseman for Central Washington, said words that brought a chill to everybody who heard them:

“Excuse me, would it be O.K. if we carried her around and she touched each bag?”

The umpires huddled and said it would be legal...

Why does everybody so praise this blatant use of a technicality to defeat the clearly stated intent of the rules?

First the Rules of Baseball, then the Commerce Clause*, then the whole dang Constitution.

And all right, so it wasn't against the rules of baseball -- everybody involved thought it was, and isn't that what matters as to the ethics of the situation?

Next we'll all be praising people who bribe judges into giving illegal verdicts that seem kind hearted and that they don't know are correct. Woe unto us all.

Boys playing baseball can be sweet, too. About 25-30 years ago, when my knees hurt too much to umpire any more, I began coaching boys' baseball. Now, mind you I like baseball, but I was never real good at it myself.
Anyway, for a couple of years I coached the 9-11 age group in our small town (and I let the first girl join the team when I found out the league had no rules against it). My daughter still lives there although I'm now about 600 miles away.
Anyway, last summer on a visit to see my grandkids, my daughter brought this guy up to me and said, "Dad, do you remember this idiot?" (And he was grinning like he had a certain amount of brain damage, as my grandma would have said.) I had to admit I didn't, and he introduced himself as one of my former players, now 35 or so with kids of his own.
He said he was coaching the 9-11 team and he was trying to teach them what he had learned from me. I was kinda puzzled, because, as I said, I wasn't really good at baseball, so I asked him what that was.
He said, "Everyone who shows up to every practice gets to play. No one complains about playing time or the position they play. If everyone plays as hard and as well as they can, after the game everyone gets ice cream. We don't win many games (and neither did my teams), but I want them to have as much fun and learn as much as I did."
I'm not sure I ever got a nicer compliment.